I want to give new life to this thread since some months were passed from last post and a lot happened: Steam for linux has arrived (I know, still beta), Unity 4.0 for linux is here, a lot of kickastarter projects release linux version from day 0... So, I think there's little reason to evade the question: what about a Linux port of Endless Space?

Endless Space has been developed on a previous Unity version (3.5.6). A Linux port is quite unlikely to be honest, despite Steam or Unity 4 (at least for now, we don't plan on porting the game). It is unfortunately not a simple update, as it would require lots of dev time and we chose focus on other priorities.

Steph'nie is the next Amplitude project Unity-based? If you get better acquainted with Unity 4 you'll have a better idea of how hard it would be to port Endless Space to Unity 4.
According to my limited experience with Unity 4 and according to the FAQ it seems rather easy to import a Unity 3 project into Unity 4:

Anyway I've finally managed to get ES running in OpenGL mode with Wine on Linux:

(this is a Linux screenshot, and the first screenshot ever taken of ES running on Linux in OpenGL mode )

The flag -force-opengl makes it crash at startup when using a vanilla Wine, because Unity 3 does something with OpenGL contexts that is acceptable for WGL, but not for the Linux equivalent layer called GLX. Hence it's likely that Endless Space in OpenGL mode will never be supported out-of-the-box by Wine: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11436#c1
It has been working in the default Direct3D9 mode though, but it's slower (because Wine has to translate every Direct3D call into an OpenGL equivalent) and on my config at least it's currently full of glitches.

To play it with Wine at full speed with the -force-opengl flag you need to apply this hacky patch to Wine sources: 0099-EndlessSpace-WGL-ShareList-Hack.patch.zip and recompile it.
Alternatively I'm hosting pre-built Wine 1.5.29 packages for Ubuntu 12.10 packages here: http://www.homo-nebulus.fr/rehost/wine/
(the updater will keep asking to revert to the official Wine package, google the way to tell it to ignore updates for a specific package)

Also after Steam does its first time setup for Endless Space you need to delete (or backup) the system32 folder of the Wine environment (by default ~/.wine/drive_c/Windows/system32) and move a fresh system32 folder created by Wine for an empty profile in its place (the native DLLs installed by Steam makes the game crash at startup).

I really love to finally be able to play one of my coups de cœur of recent years on Linux, but as you can see it's a lot of hassles to get it running properly. Beforehand I wouldn't join people asking for a Linux version because the multiplayer issues and missing features like the battle cards in auto were much more important to fix, but now Linux support would really be awesome and I think many players would be really grateful and love Amplitude even more for it :

It's good to see that the game is playable on linux (with some workarounds).

I agree that, eventually, the game should be released for linux - as it is more and more proving itself as a viable gaming platform.
However, I understand that it is low on amplitude's priorities list. First optimize the game further and release expansion packs. WHen that's done I think it should be possible to think about a port to linux. And the decision is ofcourse up to them.

I'd also appreciate a Linux version of ES. And I agree with the above post : being one of the first major games to be released on Linux in the space 4X category might be a decisive commercial advantage on this emerging market.

There are other arguments for porting games on Linux in the following blog from indie game developer Wolfire Games (creators of the famous Humble Indie Bundles) :http://blog.wolfire.com/2008/12/why-...s-x-and-linux/
Very interesting read, I think. Many points could apply to Endless Space, such as modding.

I would also love to see a linux port, and would probably purchase the game again for it.

I find it strange that they bother taking the time to do a Mac port of the game and yet not a linux one. From what I hear Linux users are more likely to play games these days and to me seem more likely than a mac user doing gaming.

I would also love to see a linux port, and would probably purchase the game again for it.

I find it strange that they bother taking the time to do a Mac port of the game and yet not a linux one. From what I hear Linux users are more likely to play games these days and to me seem more likely than a mac user doing gaming.

Mac users outnumber Linux users by a huge margin. If they're only 1/3 as likely to buy games like this, it's still coming out ahead.

Honestly a Linux port sounds like a perfect thing for a Kickstarter campaign. Figure out how many sales are required to pay for the port, and put Linux copies up for sale on Kickstarter. If enough sell to pay for the port, then they've got the money to do it. If not, nobody loses anything.

It seems, from what I've seen from other developers on an older version of Unity, there's two major steps here: upgrading the game to unity 4 and dealing with that, and exporting & testing the game on Linux.

The first step seems to be the worst in terms of time, unless of course there's lots of issues specific to Linux while testing.

It would be interesting to see the amount of time it would take to port the game to Unity 4, and then of course the amount of time it would take to test and fix a Linux version.

I just had to rebuild my system because the hard drive controller went AWOL.

Just for giggles, I tried running ES on my Linux box. OpenSUSE 12.3, latest updates. No special WINE build, no tweaks, generic settings (other than the tweaks OpenSUSE build service already included: version 1.5.31-251.1.x86_64). Graphics driver is fglrx [Radeon HD 7560D] with OpenGL.

Worked even better than on my Windows laptop. Graphics were smooth as oiled glass. Only problem was that it kept eating memory. By the end of the game it was using >14G of RAM all by itself. Fortunately, I now have 16G, and no swap partition, so things never slowed down. Had the game run any longer, there may have been trouble...